A CAVE based 3D immersive interactive city with gesture interface

This thesis presents a system that visualizes 3D city data and supports gesture interactions in a fully immersive Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE). To facilitate more natural interactions in this immersive virtual city, novel techniques are proposed for operations such as object selection, object manipulation, navigation and menu control. These operations form a basis of interactions for most Virtual Reality (VR) applications. The proposed techniques are predominantly controlled using gestures. We also propose the use of pattern recognition methods, specifically a Hidden Markov Model, to support real time dynamic gesture recognition and demonstrate its use for menu control in VR applications. Qualitative and quantitative user studies are conducted to evaluate the proposed techniques. The results of the user studies demonstrate that the interaction techniques for object selection and manipulation are measurably better than traditional techniques. The results also show that the proposed gesture based navigation and menu control techniques are preferred by experienced users. These findings can guide future user interface design in immersive environments.